No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series vs VMRay comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Palo Alto Networks VM-Series
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (13th)
VMRay
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
32nd
Average Rating
5.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is 2.4%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMRay is 1.3%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palo Alto Networks VM-Series2.4%
VMRay1.3%
Other96.3%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadNadeem - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Has supported urgent deployments and enabled inline threat protection but pricing and features could be more flexible
I am not using Palo Alto Networks VM-Series mostly, but based on my experience, there are some deficiencies in Palo Alto Networks VM-Series. Having those features missing, we are not proposing Palo Alto Networks VM-Series to all customers. However, for urgency and for some solutions that customers need for some of their other sites and subdivisions, we are providing the same.
GC
Pre-Sales at Frux
Has a valuable IP tracing feature, but is an expensive solution
We use this solution for authorization and more on the false positive verification IP tracing is the most valuable feature. The technical support needs improvement.  I have been using VMRay for two and a half years. The technical support team is not good.  Negative The initial setup is…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The VM-Series reports how much bandwidth a particular IP is using. You don't need to regularly log into a website, like a Cisco command, to see what kind of ACL it's getting. There isn't an ACL use portal event. You can go there and see how much my ACL has been getting me."
"AWS has improved our agility to apply firewall rules."
"I like the UI. Most things are accessible from the user interface and it is quite user-friendly. With respect to both VM-based firewalls and physical firewalls, it's easy to create updates."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is very easy to use."
"We can monitor the traffic manually and detect threats. Additionally, we can block different IP addresses and URLs."
"The Palo Alto VM-Series is nice because I can move the firewalls easily."
"With the improved visibility we now have, the traffic is being properly monitored, which means that we are better able to manage it. These are improvements that we saw very quickly."
"We haven't had any security issues since deploying it."
"IP tracing is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"They made only a halfhearted attempt to put in DLP (Data Loss Prevention)."
"The interface is all Java-based. I would prefer an HTML5 interface."
"People are less aware of Palo Alto."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is a complex product to work with."
"On the cloud side, they need to come up with more HA solutions to support the multi-region."
"Palo Alto definitely needs to be more competitive compared to other products. The problem that I have faced is that the price of licensing is very high and not very competitive."
"It would be good if the common features work consistently in physical and virtual environments."
"The web interface is very slow, and it needs to be faster."
"The technical support needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​The licensing is pretty much like everyone else."
"Sometimes, it's cheaper to buy a new firewall with licensing instead of renewing the licenses of an old firewall."
"This is not the cheapest firewall but it's not the most expensive of the options on the market."
"The pricing was expensive but it was comparable to the competition."
"For what you get, it does do what it says. It is a good value for an enterprise firewall.​"
"Based on the customer budget, they can choose from 12-month, 36-month, or 60-month licensing models."
"I know Palo Alto is not cheap. They have been telling me, the members of the finance team, it is not a cheap solution. It is a solution whose target is that no matter how big your organization is, small, medium, or large, it is about the maturity of your security team or infrastructure team whom you want to work with."
"Do not buy larges box if you do not need them. Rightsizing is a great task to do before​hand."
"The solution is overly priced."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) solutions are best for your needs.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise24
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Features comparison between Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls
In the best tradition of these questions, Feature-wise both are quite similar, but each has things it's better at, it kind of depends what you value most. PA is good at app control, web filtering a...
How does Azure Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks VM Series?
Both products are very stable and easily scalable. The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the overall cost is reasonable. Azure Firewall offers a solid threat awareness, can...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks VM-Series?
The pricing is more on the expensive side, but it is justified due to its functionality, reliability, and throughput, even with all features enabled. In comparison to FortiGate ( /products/fortinet...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Warren Rogers Associates
National Bank of Canada, Carbon Black, Cloudmark, Cyberint, Expel, G Data Advanced Analytics, Jisc
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Proofpoint and others in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.